Wilson Defines Position On Trusts.

New York Times 100 years ago today, October 12, 1912:
Says McKinley Showed Adjustment to New Age Which Successors Have Not Exhibited.
LAYS WREATH ON HIS GRAVE
Democratic Candidate in Ohio Tour Is Greeted by Large Audiences — Recalls Hanna's Government Control.
Special to The New York Times.
    CLEVELAND, Oct. 11.— Gov. Wilson addressed 8,000 persons in the Central Armory to-night. His speech differed little from that which he made at Canton, where he practically defined his programme for the regulation of the trusts.
    "No man," he said, "ought to be allowed to come in and compete in a local market at prices at which he is not selling elsewhere in order to make it impossible for a beginner in the enterprise to get a local foothold. No body of men who control 75 per cent of the iron mines of the country ought to be allowed to discriminate in the price at which they sell their iron as between those who are in the combine and those who are not. We cannot allow the raw materials and mineral resources of this country to be monopolised and privately controlled. No combination of men ought to discriminate between retail dealers and refuse to sell to those who venture to buy also from competitors. And so you can go through the whole list and remove the obstacles to fair competition, and then I am perfectly willing that these fellows should stay as big as they can.
    "They want regulated monopoly because they know they could not maintain themselves under a system of free competition. If they do not know it, let them come out and try. All I ask is for them to show that they have got as much brains and originative power and inventive genius and power to economize and assemble the elements of power as other men have in the United States. I do not object to any natural advantage, but only to the unnatural advantages which they manifestly enjoy."
    Just as he made a Lincoln Day of his stop at Springfield, Ill., so the Governor made a McKinley Day of his stop at Canton. After he finished his speech there he went out to McKinley's grave in an automobile, and laid a wreath on that President's tomb, as he had laid a wreath on Lincoln's tomb in Springfield.
    In his speech he reminded his auditors that McKinley had shown "symptoms of adjustment to the new age, such as his successors have not exhibited," and he built his speech around McKinley's recognition of the injustice of the tariff system established by the Republican Party. He dwelt on McKinley's last speech, the one in which the President foreshadowed his intention to remedy the evils created by the Dingley tariff, and contrasted the murdered Chief Magistrate's attitude with that of Taft and Roosevelt, both of whom were standpatters and under one of whom the tariff had been revised upward instead of downward.
    Canton, Orrville and Cleveland were the only speech-making stops of the day. At Canton there was no crowd in the streets, but at the auditorium there was plenty of enthusiasm. The Governor's voice had improved.
    "I appeal to this audience with a greater confidence," the Governor said, "because they live in the home of William McKinley, because the characteristic thing about William McKinley was that before he died, he showed symptoms of adjustment to the new age, such as his successors have not exhibited. You remember perfectly well what the utterances of Mr. McKinley's last months were with regard to the policy with which his name is particularly identified. I mean the policy of protection. You remember how he joined in opinion with what Mr. Blaine had said before him, that we had set up in this country too rigid a movement of restriction, not a movement of trade and development of manufacture; that we must look forward to a time that ought to come very soon when we should enter into reciprocal relations of trade with all the countries of the world, which was another way of saying that we must substitute elasticity for rigidity; that we must substitute trade for closed ports; that we must open the veins of the United States, so that our blood might flow free again.
    "When I reflect upon the protective policy of this country and observe, as every thoughtful man must observe, that it is the later aspects and the later uses of that policy that have built up trusts and monopoly in the United States, then I make this contrast in my thought: Mr. McKinley had already uttered his protest against what he foresaw, and his successor saw what he foresaw, and did not stop it. His successor saw those very special privileges which Mr. McKinley himself began to detect, as part of the protective policy of this country, used by the men who had obtained them in order to build up a monopoly for themselves, which made freedom of enterprise in this country more and more difficult. And therefore, I am one of those who have the utmost confidence that McKinley would not have sanctioned the later developments of the policy with which he stands identified."
    At Orrville, where the train made an unscheduled stop the Governor had something pungent to say about President Taft. He led up to it by a reference to Mark Hanna's long domination of the State, and of the Senate, a reference surer to be appreciated in Ohio than anywhere else.
    "There was a time," said the Governor, "when it was generally supposed that one man ran the government of the United States, and he was a citizen of Ohio. His name was Hanna. Whenever anybody wanted to know where the nerve centre of the American Government was, they thought of Mark Hanna. I do not say this for the purpose of throwing any doubts upon the motives or the character of Mr. Hanna: that is neither here nor there, but in order to call your attention to the fact that the man in Ohio who most stood for the concentration of economy control at one time also stood for the whole United States, for the concentration of political control; and that men in the United States Senate used to go to Mr. Hanna just as in the next generation they went to Mr. Aldrich of Rhode Island, who was Mr. Hanna's successor in exercising this kind of control.
    "And what sort of control was it? It was the control of groups of men very well known to one another, united in intelligence, co-operative in the larger undertakings of the country of every sort, who knew exactly what they wanted and knew exactly how to get it from the Government of the United States.
    "You know that a gentleman, who certainly was not unkindly disposed to the present President of the United States, said that he was an amiable gentleman surrounded by gentlemen who know exactly what they wanted. For a generation the Government of the United States, and those who have been conducting it, have been surrounded by gentlemen who knew exactly what they wanted, and in the time of Mr. Hanna and in the time of Mr. Aldrich this is the way things were done.
    "If you will take the Congressional Record and look at the debates on the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, the debates which occurred in the Senate, you will find some very interesting things in it. Mr. Aldrich was the Chairman of the Finance Committee which had that bill in charge. Mr. Aldrich again and again assured the Senate of the United States that the duties proposed in that bill were necessary for the maintenance of the industries which they would affect, and at the same time declined to supply the Senate of the United States with the information upon which he based that conclusion and advice. So that the Senate again and again followed Mr. Aldrich blindly.
    "And let me tell you that they would not have followed him any way but blindly, because if he had divulged the sources of his information they would have seen that he was building up special interests which he may have thought necessary for the prosperity of the United States; but which concentrated their effects upon very small groups of men indeed."